Tube Preamp Buffer - TOUR!

Started a new topic for the tube preamp buffer tour. If all goes well I expect to be kicking off the tour sometime in the latter half of February.

This topic is solely for organizing/managing the tour and for participants to post their comments. For general questions and discussions regarding the tube preamp buffer please use the topic "Hybrid Tube Preamp Buffer"

Ok, here are the tour rules:

1) Tour group limited to 12 participants2) Each participant promises to play with the buffer for no more than 1 week (7 days) before sending in on. If you have scheduling problems please let me know. 3) When shipping it forward, participant agrees to insure the buffer for loss/damage at $1500 value. 4) You must ship forward using tracking. It can be USPS Priority, FedEx, or UPS. 5) Pack the unit up the way you received it with all the bumpers and plastic bag etc. 6) If the box gets buggered up too badly let me and know and I'll send out a fresh one. 7) The tour order will be according to geographic location such that each leg will be the least distance to minimize shipping cost. 8 ) The preamp must be shipped with the tubes removed and boxed up.

I will set up a group googledocs spreadsheet that all participants can have access to. Once you have access to the tour spreadsheet, please enter all your contact info, address etc. If you are uncomfortable sharing your contact information with the tour group please PM me to work that out.

In no particular order, here's the current lineup as of 1.18.171) konut2) rklein3) ozarktom4) tjhub5) 33na3rd6) glynnw7)8 ) 9)10)11)12)

Rather than put participants' contact info into a shared spreadsheet, I will keep that info private. I will use your addresses to sort the order of the tour to minimize the shipping distances/costs. Once I have that done, I'll publish the tour participant list in the order we'll follow.

Rather than put participants' contact info into a shared spreadsheet, I will keep that info private. I will use your addresses to sort the order of the tour to minimize the shipping distances/costs. Once I have that done, I'll publish the tour participant list in the order we'll follow.

First, the bad news. On Friday our CNC laser died hard. Looks like a combination of a toasted power supply and the controller board doesn't look good either. That means we are dead in the water in terms of engraving our front/rear panels. We are also about a week behind getting our panels anodized. The anodizing is just a matter of another week but getting the CNC laser back up and running is going to be a project. We have to rebuild it basically. The model we have is no longer supported plus it was marginal to begin with and a bit undersized for our needs. I've ordered practically a whole new system of components including new power supplies (2, one for the laser and one for the stepper motors & controller) and a new controller. If all goes well we'll be back up and running in a couple of weeks bigger and better than ever. But this CNC outage is going to delay the release of the buffer because we can't produce finished product without the CNC laser. Argh!

Now for the good news. The tour is going to proceed regardless of the CNC issue. To do so we're going to use the ugly prototype unit. Raw aluminum front and rear panels. Enclosure box with a hole in its side. Go ugly or go home. We are clearly not going for style points here so it's all about the sonics. Oh, and while I'm referring to the tour unit as our prototype unit it does have the actual final production boards/parts internally. But it has none of the upgrade options. No upgraded plate voltage super regulator. No Vishay foil reistors. No V-Cap coupling caps. If you end up liking it as it, it can only get better with the upgrades.

I still need name, address, phone and email for the 2 tour participants below. Sent you both a PM as well.

orientalexpressmitch2

As soon as I have those addresses I'll finalize the tour routing. I plan on shipping out the buffer prototype unit this week.

Here is the tour sequence. Starts off on west coast, then to TX/LA, then up into the midwest states and ends up on the east coast.

Since I've not heard from orientalexpress, he's been moved to the standby list and dburna is now on the tour.

I'll ship the ugly prototype out to golfrod later this week to kick things off.

In terms of shipping, I've found that shipping USPS Priority is the least cost and the fastest. They've been very reliable but please make sure you insure the unit for at least $500 in case of loss. Of course you can opt to use UPS or FedEX instead if you like.

Wait, the tour's not ugly. The buffer is ugly. Well they aren't all ugly. Just the tour unit is ugly. Because it's our prototype enclosure. With raw aluminum panels. And has a hole in its side. Because the laser broke.